Dickson, Gordon - Dragon Knight 09 - The Dragon and the F

VIP免费
2024-12-05 0 0 1.11MB 682 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
Scanned by an unsung hero.
Proofed by Highroller.
Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet.
The Dragon and the Fair Maid
of Kent by Gordon R. Dickson
Chapter One
Jim (Baron Sir James Eckert, Lord of Malencontri Castle and its environs, and
also now uppermost-level apprentice in Magick) woke two hours before
moonset, and rose from bed, going to the nearest of the Solar windows to look
out.
Behind him in their bed his wife, Angie (Lady Angela) slept peacefully. Beyond
the window it was still full night, but cloudless and moon-bright. From just
under the top of Malencontri's tower, where the Solar's large, single room was,
the full moon itself was still up, and everything far below him stood out clearly.
The tall trees beyond the cleared space surrounding the castle blended together
in an unbroken wall of blackness, the stubbled ground of the cleared space
showed a faint shine on its patches of grass, evidence that the night's rain had
stopped only recently.
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (1 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
As he watched, two figures, bent under the loads on their backs, came out of the
woods to his right and cut across the cleared space at an angle to enter the woods
again on its further side. They walked slowly, heavily, one figure taller than the
other, the large bundles riding high on their shoulders.
The prospect of dawn must have roused them, with its hope of sun to dry their
worn clothes—for clearly all they owned was carried on their shoulders now—
and put a little heat into their bones. So they had roused from whatever forest
nest they had made in the rain for the night and were once more moving on, to
what they did not know, but someplace better than this, and much better than
wherever they had left.
Standing before the six-inch squares of glass that made up the panes in the Solar
window, warmed by the blazing fireplace, refueled even while he and Angie
slept by the servant who, with a man-at-arms, was always on duty outside their
door, Jim felt a chill go through him.
They grew more numerous every day, these drifters. Running from news of the
bubonic plague, now in France—always traveling west, always so poor they did
not even have a donkey to carry their belongings, and with no real goal in sight—
driven on only by the instinct for survival. The chill deepened in Jim. There they
trudged, cold, undoubtedly hungry, if not starving. All doors were closed to them
out of a fear of the very sickness they fled from.
No community would take them in, for the same fear. Some member of the
Church might put out food for them, but otherwise could not help—probably
would not help. They had probably given up hope of aid, even from Heaven.
Faith and Love, those two great Pillars of Strength in the medieval world—
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (2 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
available to even the poorest—were almost surely lost to them by now. Faith,
that offered hope even beyond the grave, would have been drowned in the
animal effort to live. Love, in all its meanings of this time—love of wife,
children, comrades, community, and country—all the ways the word wove
together in the tapestry of medieval society, had once made the fabric of their
lives. All gone now.
What was left now was no more than the blind urge to run, and under that
instinct, they trudged mindlessly westward, ever westward, like cattle before the
driving, level snow in the fierce wind of a blizzard.
Jim remembered how he had lied about being a knight and a baron when he and
Angie—now his wife—came to this medieval world, a far different version of
the Earth into which he had been born and grown up. He stood here now, warm,
protected and fed as what he had claimed to be. It was true he had done what
was required of someone with the rank he had claimed. He had followed the
rules. He had fought with the proper weapons when necessary, according to the
customs here—not well, but well enough to get by. But his attempts to live had
been rewarded. Those two out there had not. There was no more fairness in this
time and place than there had been in the world of his twentieth-century birth.
The ones he watched might reach the sea eventually—it was not a great distance
from them now—and there would be nothing for them there, either. What would
they do then? Drown themselves like lemmings in their spring migration? There
seemed no sense or reason to their keeping on.
The chill was deep in him now, and he knew what had driven it there: the
question that had returned again and again to him the last two years of those few
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (3 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
he and Angie had spent in this historic period of a world almost exactly like the
one in which they had grown up.
Will Angie and I ever really belong here?
And even as he faced that question once again, Carolinus, his Master-in-Magick,
appeared beside him.
"Good! You're up!" he said. His red robe, like all his robes, was worn thin, and
would stay that way until, in a less absent-minded moment, he would recollect
the fact and make it clean and new again. "Jim, I've only a short time to tell you
something important."
"Shh!" said Jim. "Angie's asleep!"
"She will not wake while we talk," said Carolinus, "and, Jim, try practicing at
least a little proper respect to senior Magickians. You may need it soon. You
may now be in the last stage of apprenticeship, but you're not yet a fellow
member to a Magickian—let alone one like me. Must I remind you I'm not only
the most senior of Magickians, but one of the only three AAA+ Magickians in
the world?"
"Of course not," said Jim. "I never forget. But I thought we could drop formality
in private."
"Sometimes. Sometimes not! This is not one of those times. I come to you at this
hour in person, that no other Magickian might chance to overhear, and, by the
way, with a ward around us now through which nothing could be heard, to
privately give you information it is against the laws of the Collegiate of
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (4 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
Magickians for a member to share—two laws in particular I, myself, helped
write. It was I who woke you just now, I who then gave you some moments in
which to become fully awake, so that you would fully grasp the importance of
what I have to say."
"Sorry," said Jim. "But look, Carolinus, I was deep asleep just ten minutes ago,
and about to go back to it. Wouldn't you rather tell me in the morning—"
"Jim, listen to me! You must tell no one—not even Angie. There are things no
apprentice should ever be told beforehand. One is that his Master-in-Magick has
proposed him for full membership—until the Collegiate has agreed to consider
him. I'm telling you this now—and the other matter that brings me here—
because the problem is dire, and I believe I have seen in you a capacity no other
apprentice has ever shown."
"I see," said Jim, fully awake to the conversation now and at last impressed by
what Carolinus was telling him. He had never heard the elder magickian speak to
him with quite this much urgency before. "All right, if it's that serious I won't
even tell her—though we generally don't keep secrets from each other—"
"This is not your secret!"
Carolinus glared at Jim for a moment. He seemed to grow in stature.
"I understand," Jim said.
"Then engrave this thought in your mind. Whatever must be done to prevent it,
whatever it costs you, me or anyone else—the King must not die! The King must
not die!"
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (5 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
"You've mentioned this before," Jim said. "But never this seriously. Is there
some immediate danger—" Jim began to ask, but it was too late.
Carolinus was gone.
Quietly Jim went back to bed and slid carefully under the covers. Angie did not
stir. The image of the two refugees, drifting westward, was still with him, riding
on top of it in his mind was what Carolinus had said. The part about his now
being considered for membership in the Collegiate was welcome—he had ideas
of what he wanted to do with that membership—but it was no great surprise.
They would have had to do something about him eventually.
Although he had no direct evidence of the fact, he was sure that no other
apprentice-rated magician came within a country mile of him in terms of magical
abilities—not anywhere in this world, though that was not really due to his
having an innate genius where magic was concerned. It was to do with the
advantage of having grown up in a world of scientific method and knowledge
more than five hundred years in the future of this time.
Carolinus' unusually powerful concern over the life of the King was something
else again. There must be not only reason for it, but reason that deeply concerned
the world-wide Collegiate of Magickians itself. According to the history that had
been his undergraduate and graduate study where he had come from, Edward IV
was not due to die for years yet.
But—he reminded himself—events here often did not exactly match what he had
learned in the world of his birth.
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (6 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
This last thought gnawed at his mind, colored by the emotion of seeing the
drifters. He was tired, in need of sleep, but sleep seemed impossible.
Thought succeeded thought. Possibility followed possibility. Mental scenarios in
which he dealt with one wild situation after another… The night-duty servant
quietly came in several times to replenish the wood in their fireplace. Each time
Jim pretended to be asleep.
At last, he did sleep—but not well—waking to find predawn looking in the
windows and Angie gone. He got up, dressed, called in the room servant to make
up the bed, and lay down on it.
He fell asleep again. This time he dreamed—until the sound of the door opening
woke him a second time, as surely as if it had been an alarm.
"Jim!" said the Lady Angela Eckert, to the further sound of the door closing
sharply behind her. She came in, lit now by bright morning sunlight through the
Solar windows, moving swiftly to his bedside to stare down at him. "You're as
white as a sheet!"
Jim looked up at her from their big bed and answered without thinking. His
voice did not come out right. He had meant it to sound humorous. It did not.
"Someone just walked over my grave," he said.
Angie continued to stare at him, her face showing a mixture of expressions:
alarmed concern, near anger.
"What on earth do you mean saying a stupid thing like that?" she said finally…
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (7 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
but gently now, her face showing only concern as she sat down on the edge of
the bed. "Here you are, all dressed up and lying there on a made-up bed."
"Dressed up?"
He glanced down at his body. He had forgotten he had dressed—dressed up—in
his finest clothes, and had forgotten that the bed beneath him was made up. The
dream came back to him.
But Angie was going on, talking almost automatically as she stared at him with
still deeper concern.
"—When I let you oversleep it was because I thought you looked so tired. But
everyone in the castle is going to have to work like beavers today—"
"No beavers," he said, still stupid. "Fourteenth century. England. No beavers
here."
"Bees with their little tails on fire, then! If we're going to get the castle ready in
time for Geronde and Brian's wedding—"
"The servants'll do all that," he said, and once again his voice came out wrong.
"They won't let me do any of it."
"That's not the point and you know it. They've got to see you looking furious, as
if you'd have to do it yourself if they don't. They want you all worked up and
involved, so they know they ought to be all worked up and involved, too—
they're our two best friends, after all, and everybody knows it. All worked up
because the banns had to be read again to have it here by extraordinary Church
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (8 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
permission and our dirty old chapel cleaned and refixed in no time at all so that
Geronde can have the Mass she wants following the wedding—and everything
else."
There was no good answer to this. It was all true, so he said nothing.
"And here you lie," she went on, "three hours past sun-up, in visitor-greeting
clothes, doing nothing!"
He could hardly deny his clothes or the fact he was doing nothing. So he said
nothing. Angie would change gears in a moment. She herself was wearing an
old, mulberry-colored gown… everyday clothes—
"Jim," she said, firmly, "what is it? First the dress-up. Now you scare me half to
death saying what you did."
He had to give her a reasonable answer. The truth.
"They're both part of the same thing," he said. He sat up, swinging his legs over
the edge of the bed so that he sat beside her. He put an arm around her shoulders.
"Carolinus came toward the end of the night. He had something to tell me. But
he made me promise not to tell anyone else—even you."
"Well, that was good of him!—No, cancel that. I know he wouldn't do anything
like that without a good reason." She turned her head to look up into his face.
"And that made you have some crazy dream?"
"Maybe!" said Jim. He did not really know. "But when he came, I'd just been
looking out the window and seen a couple of drifters—a man and a woman, I
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (9 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
think. One was a full head taller than the other. I couldn't get them out of my
mind. So, I lay awake a long time, then went back to sleep and had this dream."
"And made the bed yourself, and got dressed up like this while you were still
dreaming?"
"Of course not. I dressed, thinking I'd stay up, called in the servant to make the
bed, then lay down on the made-up bed—and had the dream."
"Some dream, to affect you like this!"
Again he had no easy answer.
"Tell me what it was about," she said.
He put his arm around her and took her hand, laying it out palm up in his own
open palm. They both studied it for a moment—Angle's looking fragile against
his broader, thicker hand, with its longer fingers, callused now by tight-held
reins and hours of weapon practice with Brian. Then he brought his arm back
and covered both hands with his other, holding her hand within both of his.
"I meant what I told you earlier, literally," he said, as gently as he could. "I
dreamed they were walking on the ground over me. I dreamed I was dead."
"Jim!"
"I'm sorry," he said. "I wasn't going to tell you. But you had to know. That's how
it was."
There was a moment when neither said anything.
file:///J|/sci-fi/Nieuwe%20map/Gordon%20Dickson%20...night%2009%20-%20The%20Dragon%20and%20the%20F.html (10 of 682)16-2-2006 15:23:11
摘要：

GordonR.Dickson-TheDragonandtheFairMaidofKentScannedbyanunsunghero.ProofedbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.TheDragonandtheFairMaidofKentbyGordonR.DicksonChapterOneJim(BaronSirJamesEckert,LordofMalencontriCastleanditsenvirons,andalsonowuppermost-levelapprenticeinMagick)woke...

展开>> 收起<<
Dickson, Gordon - Dragon Knight 09 - The Dragon and the F.pdf

共682页,预览10页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：682 页 大小：1.11MB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-05

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 配电装置 动力学连接体 力的合成 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 682
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注